


level one

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (mention of Coulson/cellist), Angst, Coulson thinks Skye is the greatest thing since sliced bread, Coulson's pov, Don't Touch Lola, Drunkenness, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Future Fic, Office Party, Team Fluff, Unresolved Sexual Tension, hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 13:30:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1228186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Skye thinks Coulson is too young to be naming successors but she appreciates the confidence.</i> </p><p>Or, Skye makes it to Level 1 and the team throws a party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	level one

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He can hear Skye and Simmons laughing in the background as he speaks to Fury on the phone. It's been almost a year since those two (all of them) started inhabiting the plane and it is a fitting sound to fill the place, and one he wouldn't mind hearing more often. Coulson finds it easier to concentrate on the hum of laughter behind the lab door than on whatever Director Fury is telling him right now.

"Are you not going to gloat?" Fury urges him.

Coulson doesn't do that. He's just happy with a job well done. Happy with the knowledge that Skye is one step closer to _belonging_ – if it's SHIELD who have to provide the belonging part, well, Coulson is more than willing to exert all his influence.

"No gloating. I'd be happy to hear you say it, though, sir."

There's a beat and Coulson can hear the static of the extra-super-secret-secure connection. As if the villains of the world would be interested in the details of a junior agent's party.

"Your girl did a good job," Nick Fury says.

 _Not my girl_ is the first thing Coulson thinks, not because Skye isn't (she kind of is, in some respects; an assesment he is pretty confident Skye would agree with) but because that's no way of talking about a grown woman. But he knows Fury calls everybody "your girl/your boy" equally, whether the situation warrants it or not – he's pretty sure he's heard him refer to Captain America as _Your boy_ to Natasha, and that Coulson found personally insulting.

He's not sure how to speak to Director Fury anymore. There's only the safety of lies at this point. He has made the conscious choice to pretend: pretend Fury is the same man he thought he was, before Coulson got stabbed through the heart. Pretend he never found out about Tahiti. It's easier this way – he doesn't know if he'll ever have the spine to question Fury's actions, to face him openly about it. Fury knows, though, and he must be detecting the undetectable changes in Coulson's voice right in this conversation; to an outside observer nothing has changed, their relationship, the correspondence of loyalties between the two men. The carcass of their old routines sustain them. Coulson is really good at this (he's also really good at convincing himself of things he shouldn't) and no one outside him and Fury (and maybe Hill) would be able to notice a thing.

"Now you should stop pestering HQ," Fury says.

"Not until she's got your job." Of course Fury can't tell he's not joking – Fury can't tell what kind of man Coulson is anymore.

"Is there booze in that party of yours?" It should be weird to hear the director of SHIELD say _booze_ ; somehow Fury manages to make it sound suave.

"There might be some champagne."

"Try not to enjoy yourself too much."

Coulson clicks his tongue, wishing the banter didn't feel so hollow. "You know me, Director. I cannot be stopped."

"Good night, Coulson. And don't worry about Miss Level 1's future. I'll keep an eye on her."

"The good one, I hope."

Fury makes an exhasperated noise at the other end of the line.

"Now... Can I speak to Party Girl?" he asks.

Coulson makes a gesture towards Skye, who disentangles herself as best she can from her conversation with FitzSimmons and sprints out of the lab.

"For you."

"Who is it?" she asks, surprised. She must be thinking everyone she knows in the whole world is on this plane right now.

"The boss." Coulson watches as her forehead wrinkles with confusion. He smiles: "Not me. _Our_ boss."

She takes the phone from his hand, gingerly, still unconvinced.

"Yes?"

Coulson would very much like to hear what Fury is telling Skye and viceversa but he gives her the privacy and steps away, he goes inside and busies himself with a second glass of champagne. Skye hadn't wanted a party in the first place but Ward and Simmons conspired behind everybody's backs and here they all are now, the lab made festive via drinks, some confetti and a humble CONGRATULATIONS, SKYE sign hanging across the monitors – handmade rather than printed, blue paint under their fingertips. Fitz had only agreed to let them use his precious glass table on the condition that they put a waterproof sheet over it first; Simmons had rolled her eyes _profusely_. Plastic glasses and party snacks and the humbleness of it reminds Coulson of an office party rather than secret government agents celebrating. He grabs a handful of peanuts and sits down to listen to his team's conversation.

When Skye comes back in she has the deer-in-the-headlights look of every junior agent who ever had to speak with Director Fury for the first time. It makes Coulson feel nostalgic, like he suspects there are few uncomplicated things left for Skye inside this organization. She moves, a bit stunned, to grab a seat by Coulson. He wonders if he should look at her and find her older, wiser, more responsible, but in the end it's all just a piece of paper, with a lot of power behind but just paper after all. The others (and by others he means FitzSimmons) have made her wear a black suit for a joke, in traditional Hub fashion, and her hair slicked back. But now she has chosen to lose the jacket and she is rolling the sleeves of her white shirt up her elbows – she doesn't look like an agent; she doesn't look like anything other than herself.

"Nice chat with the boss?" he asks her, in a private voice. Maybe it's because he's been in SHIELD long enough to remember when Director Fury was not _Director Fury_ but Coulson seems to be one of the few people on the planet unimpressed by the fireworks which make up Fury's public personality.

"Surreal" is all Skye says.

"Now, seriously, Skye," Ward interrupts them. "How much did you score in the aptitude test?"

"I'm not telling you guys. You've all gone to the Academy, you can't expect me to compete–"

"Boo," FitzSimmons throw confetti at her. Ward joins in the booing.

"I'm her S.O. I should be allowed to know. Someone has to know," he says.

"Coulson knows," May says and everybody goes still for a moment. She's the only one not drinking champagne but beer, coolly throwing this bit of data around.

They all turn to Coulson with a gleeful look in their eyes. All except Skye, who's quietly pleading with him. He becomes very preoccupied by the bunch of peanuts in the palm of his hand.

"I know," he admits, almost unable to suppress a smirk.

The team (or rather, FitzSimmons and Ward) move closer to him, slowly but intently, some sort of zombie attack. Skye puts her body between them and Coulson, as if she could physically stop the spilling of information.

"But he's bound by a vow of silence!"

Ward won't give up that easily. "Come on, sir, how did she do?"

He doesn't reply, gives Ward's question a slight shrug. But of course Ward can read the gesture perfectly.

"Uh," Ward, backing down. To anyone else it's absolutely non-committal, that sound. Coulson can tell he is impressed.

"But what does that mean?" Fitz demands.

The subject is dropped after this, because Skye deftly manuvers them away from it. They end up watching YouTube videos of children playing the piano very badly, which is when Coulson takes the chance to slip away.

Not that he walks out of the party, exactly. He's still there, in the hold, looking at his team celebrate. His team but Skye's hour. If the others notice his absence they are sober enough to just let him be. For some reason he feels like retreating – he paces for a bit, the plane unnervingly dead-like when sitting idle inside a hangar, until his settles on the comforting and familiar shape of Lola and decides to get in.

He sits on the driver's seat, noticing the less-than-immaculate state of the dashboard. He takes out the piece of cloth from the glove compartment he has for times like this. This is how he decides he should enjoy a party: cleaning his Corvette. Seeing Skye graduate to Level 1 didn't make him feel old but this certainly is.

He's pretty concentrated on it, too, so he doesn't notice Skye walking up to him until she is right by his side.

"Having a little of you-time with Lola?"

Coulson looks up. "Dusting her off a bit. I don't know how we keep picking up all this dust."

"Can I come in?"

What he does next startles Skye, and Coulson is not altogether sure why he enjoys her surprise so much but he does: he climbs into the passenger seat, leaving the driver's to Skye.

Her eyes widen. " _Seriously_?"

He nods. Skye flings herself into the car with a little too much vehemence if you ask Coulson. But it's okay – he knows how methodically careful she has been with Lola since the beginning. The aptitude test indicated she sometimes has trouble following orders and okay, fair enough, but Coulson could have told them this doesn't apply to dealing with his car so maybe it's a problem with the orders and not with the girl. She puts her hands on the wheel savoring every second, every inch of contact, the grip respectful but firm. She looks ahead, like she could drive away and never look back. There's a bit of the other Skye in the gesture – the one Coulson didn't really get to know, the one he can only piece together from the stories she's told him generously: lonely and nomad, with a lot more rage than this Skye.

"Will you let me drive her someday, for real?" she's asking, flexing her fingers around the wheel.

"No chance."

"What about when I make Level Two? It could be my reward, my graduation present."

Coulson clears his throat. "I can confidently say you'll make Level Two much sooner than I'll become comfortable with the idea of letting you drive Lola."

Skye regards such a comment with a bit of suspicion.

"I think that might have been half a compliment, so I'm going to take it."

He smiles. "More than half."

She makes a pleased sound, swaying her body so that her shoulder touches his for a moment.

"So. How does it feel to be a proper SHIELD agent?" he asks "Is it everything you expected?"

Unlike him, who jumped head first into government work without a second thought in his late teens, Skye has been very deliberately pursuing this for almost a year. The girl who hadn't allowed herself to want anything for so long has wanted this and she has won it. Whatever concerns about the inner workings of their organization Coulson might harbor these days, it's hard for him not to be thrilled about this development, about _this moment_ , about Skye not being the outsider anymore. He is not naive: he realizes he's still going to be the butt of every joke in HQ, the guy with the mid-life crisis and the ridiculous plane, the ridiculous team, and Skye will still be considered with mistrust, but on the paper she's just as much of an agent as any of them. Coulson tries not to think about it as _insurance_.

"I don't know. I don't notice anything different in me. I feel like I should be wiser, more responsible all of the sudden. I'm just me with a badge," Skye replies. "Fury told me you pushed a lot for this. Thank you. I was a bit tired of being just the consultant."

"I just did a bit of paperwork, that is all."

She sighs; he knows he frustrates her sometimes.

"Anyway, the thanks stand, so take them. Not sure why the hurry, though."

"No one can tell what the future has in store. More than once the team's suffered the consequences of being unprepared for it." It's the truth, even if he puts it in a more abstract manner than he should.

Skye crosses her arms in front of her chest.

"What does that have to do with me becoming a real, live SHIELD agent?"

He'd rather do this without looking at her in the eye but; since when has Coulson been capable of that? He'd rather not do this at all. He'd rather hide it from Skye, all the weight he's willing to put on her shoulders when the day comes.

"If something happens to me, this team will need someone to steer them in the right direction."

He can feel her shifting in her seat before he finishes the sentence, uneasy.

" _Nothing_ is going to happen to you."

"You're missing my point," he says.

"I'm not. I just don't care about your point. Nothing is going to happen to you."

He looks away. From behind the lab door Fitz seems to have noticed their absence and Coulson catches May leading his glance outside, towards the car. Skye has noticed too, because she has set the worried curve of her lips into a shallow smile as she waves at Fitz, indicating they are having a splendid time out here too and don't you worry, I'll be back in five minutes.

"Anyway, there's May and Ward," Skye says, the smile dissolving as she turns to Coulson again. "They'd take care of things."

He tells her the only way he knows how.

"May and Ward are good soldiers. The best I've ever know. But they're not leaders. You could be."

Skye takes a long breath, alarmed and touched at the same time. " _Wow_. And thanks."

Coulson has watched this girl work so hard and yet sometimes she stares at him like every one of his compliments is a magnanimous gift, not something she's rightfully earned all by herself. Coulson, the agent, is very good at this kind of assesment, he knows exactly what sort of childhood would do _that_ to a person like Skye. He feels a bitter rage at the back of his throat – SHIELD saved Skye's life, but he wonders if she's ever going to recover from everything else they did to her.

She uncrosses her arms. "You're too young to be naming your successor anyway, but I appreciate the confidence."

"You're probably right."

"Don't be so pessimistic, or paranoid, I'm not sure what you're being. You're safe, I – the team's got your back."

"I know you do."

"Or maybe it has nothing to do with that. Are you thinking about leaving? Have a normal life outside this madness? Because you can do that too. You don't owe SHIELD anything." She catches his expression. "What? I'm not blind, I know you feel you've been missing out on life."

How she knows that Coulson cannot even begin to fathom. He is torn between wanting it to be because she is exceptionally intuitive (some of the test results were barely on the safe side of _intriguing_ ) or wanting it to be because _it's him_ and Skye just knows him that well.

He looks ahead, eyes pleasantly resting over the members of their team. May has cracked open the box where they keep the shot glasses, finally; champange and YouTube already forgotten. The recipient of the party and her current absence also forgotten or overlooked.

It's true that Coulson once imagined that's what he wanted, an ordinary life, PTA meetings and Sundays in bed and all those vague, rose-tinted things. Everything he thought SHIELD had taken away from him. Come the bad days he is still tempted to believe it. But he knows it's not real. It is alluring because it's a fantasy. The real stuff –his own choices, his doubts, the team, this girl sitting right next to him– that's hard work, and hard work is never what one daydreams about. Most days Coulson is okay with _hard work_ , doesn't let himself pretend life is somewhere else. And he doesn't think about Tchaikovsky's Nocturne in D minor Op.19 No.4 as often as he used to.

"My place is here," he tells Skye without looking at her. "And not because I owe anything."

It's not like he could have said otherwise but Skye seems relieved to hear it, even if she knows (because she must know, because she always does) Coulson himself is not sure how true the words are.

He feels Skye's hand coming to rest gently on his wrist. The touch is light as a feather, her thumb barely brushing across his pulse. She leaves it there, warm and solid, while he closes his fingers slightly around the length of hers. He takes a long breath.

They look at each other, a flash of recognition between them. He finds it hard to mistake it, much as he'd like to. Coulson has been carefully preparing for the future – he couldn't have prepared for this.

Then they see the tumbling, excited figure of Simmons walking towards them. Skye's hand disappears promply from under his, her expression joyful and vacant to greet the other girl. She's good, Coulson thinks, a bit grateful for Simmons' interruption. Of all the nights, this is not the night.

"Skye, Skye, Skye. Come let's dance!"

Both Skye and him chuckle.

"There's no music."

"I'll get music! Oh, Skye, _Skye_. How little faith you have."

Simmons does a little twirl as she arrives at the car. Coulson wonders how much she's had to drink; apparently not enough that she doesn't give Skye an appreciative look when she notices her sitting in the driver's seat. Skye, on the other hand, has barely had a drink all night, Coulson realizes just now. It makes him wonder.

"Dance!" Simmons orders, and her natural enthusiam transforms into something scary.

She has her hand on the windowshield, the other swinging her drink. It physically pains Coulson to be watching this, imagining the fingerprint traces the gesture is going to leave on the car. He tries not to let it show because _poor Simmons_ – he must not be doing a thorough job of it because Skye catches him. She grabs Simmons' hand gently and takes it off the car, mercifully, saying, "Okay, let's go dance then. Show me your moves, sister."

"Oh I'll _show you_ my moves," Simmons replies, sounding like a threat rather than friendly banter.

When Skye climbs out of the car Coulson gives her a grateful look. Simmons is already scurring back into the lab, where Ward is explaining something to Fitz with great intensity, holding up a shot of tequila as integral part of this explanation. Coulson ponders vaguely if he should forbid alcohol in the Bus; he doesn't want this night to decend into anything less than a nice memory for Skye.

"You guys don't get to party much, uh?" She comments, looking at the mini-mayhem inside the lab.

"We're just civil servants at heart."

"Ouch."

She looks apologetic about leaving him alone – as if she'd much rather stay here in his absurd car than go back inside and try to navigate Simmons' intoxication. Coulson doesn't get it, drunkSimmons sounds pretty fun to be around, even if he is planning on giving her a little talking-to in the morning, to remind her of the proper behavior for a seasoned agent, if only to see her squirm.

The music starts booming in the next room. How little faith Skye had indeed. They exchange a fond smile. Coulson climbs out of his seat and into the driver's, sighing contentedly like an exiled monarch taking back his kingdom.

Just as she about to walk away Skye turns on her heels, with a curious expression on her face. One of those very few times Coulson cannot read her.

"You wouldn't happen to want to come with me and dance, right?" she asks.

He feels almost tempted – if only because it would shock the team to learn he actually knows how to dance, and pretty well too. But he's not sure that's what Skye is asking, or not entirely.

"I think I'll stay here with Lola for a bit." He pats the steering wheel, leaving his hands there, as if ready to drive away any moment now. Of all the nights, this cannot be the night.

"Weird day, uh?"

"Big day," he corrects her.

Skye gives him a glowing smile. One of those you don't get to see that much when you work in SHIELD. She puts her hand on Coulson's forearm and gives it a little squeeze.

"Thanks, sir," she says, gesturing towards the mock Level 1 badge FitzSimmons made for her and she's wearing around her neck. "For everything. I know it's just stupid Level 1 and I have a lot to learn but–"

Her words are felled by his expression, a careful shake of his head. He wants to say that it was her, _all her_ , but he saves it for a time when Skye is ready to believe him.

"You're welcome, Skye."

She finally walks away, Simmons already waiting at the door with open arms and a mean iPod playlist. Coulson sees Skye throw her head back in laughter but she doesn't dance, she takes a stool and lets May fill a shot with tequila to the rim. Ward and Fitz are comparing dancefloor moves under the supervision (and ultimate judgement) of Simmons.

Coulson watches Skye for a while – her body moving into May's personal space and May letting her, huddling together around the bottle and their conversation. It's a good image to sum up the night, he thinks, and the girl looks like she owns the whole joint.

It occurs to him that Skye is no longer the outsider but maybe he is. Watching behind the glass, life always somewhere else.

(he touches his fingertips distractedly to his left wrist)

No, _he's not_. Because he decides it. He's relieved to know he didn't lie to Skye at all: this is his place.


End file.
